Podcasting our Book Club Conversations

Book Club conversations are an important part of a UWCSEA literacy education. Thinking deeply about a shared text, sharing understandings and connections, and - crucially - listening to the perspectives of others, all contributes to our reading experiences.

As teachers, we know these conversations are valuable, but we can only be in one place at one time. Listening to one group's discussions has the opportunity cost of missing out on the other conversations.

Podcasting book club conversations has a number of benefits - not least of which being teachers have the opportunity to gain an insight into more conversations.

Knowing a conversation will be recorded adds a layer of accountability for students, meaning they tend to take it more seriously. They consider their word choice more carefully, ensure they provide evidence for their assertions and listen with greater consideration.

G5 teacher Andrea McDonald began the podcasting process for her students by listening to great examples. Book Club for Kids has a whole host of age-appropriate options. They also listened to a charming episode of the Modern Love podcast called 'What it's like to fall, quite literally, in love'.

Andrea provided an A3 planning sheet for students to write sentence starters to use as prompts for their discussion. The class wanted natural sounding conversations that were largely unscripted, to give it that sense of authenticity they love when listening to podcasts.

Here are some documents Andrea created in support of the planning and preparing, including some examples of student work.

Once planning had been completed, the groups found quiet spots to record. We decided on using iMovie for easy editing later, however, GarageBand would be another great choice.

To enhance the quality of audio, we used headphones with a microphone placed in the middle of the group. Students recorded their discussion in chunks on a shared iPad and airdropped their footage to their individual laptops afterward.

One thing we learned (the hard way!) was not to record in 1080p, but to change the settings to 720p instead. We had some difficulty getting the footage to individual computers due to the sheer size of the files. The students were very patient with this frustrating aspect of the process.

Next, it was time to edit. Adding clips to iMovie was pretty straight forward, so we just showed them how to detach the audio from the video clip, and replace the image so the emphasis could be on the conversation itself.

Making decisions to cut aspects of their conversation was really hard for many! But always good practice to learn about cutting to strengthen the overall process. Most podcasts ended up between 10 - 15 minutes in length.

Below you will find a few examples of our finished podcasts. It was our first attempt, but a great learning experience for us all.

Grade 5 Exhibition - Printed Display Boards

This year at East we are lucky to have access to a large format printer. I say large, and I mean HUGE! It is about the size of a piano (see the door in the picture as a frame of reference!).

The Grade 5 students were given the option of printing their display boards in one piece using the large format printer, or they could assemble their boards by printing individual sections, as usual.

The majority of the groups chose to print using the large format printer, which was quite a leap of faith. Time was tight, and deadlines were shorter for those wanting to use the printer (we had to factor in time to print, after all).

I presented to students about: 

• The elements of design (CARP - Contrast, Alignment, Repetition & Proximity)
• How to pull people in by maximising visuals and making numbers pop
• Choosing a font which is clear and easy to read
• The importance of a minimalist colour scheme

I showed some boards which had been poorly designed so they would know some pitfalls to avoid. I showed some board makeovers, so they could see the difference CARP can make in a viewer's understanding of a display board.

We created some blank Pages templates for the students to use, which were set the right size for their display boards. From there, the groups decided on colour schemes, images, statistics, and most importantly - which information was the most important to share on their board.

Some tips which helped students included:

• Breaking information into sections, so that related information was in the same section (Proximity)
• Having a semi-transparent shape behind a text box to make text stand out.
• Arranging text in columns or chunks, instead of going all the way across the page.
• Using Creative Commons images, such as the wonderful ones found in The Noun Project.
• Searching for the largest image size, so no pixelation occurred in the finished poster.

My colleague Dave Caleb and I touched base with as many groups as we could to give suggestions. It was lovely for us to see the different ways the groups chose to display their understanding. The other powerful thing was seeing the students' faces fill with pride when they saw their printed work. 

One student said, "I never thought I would be able to create something THIS professional!"

Some of the advantages to using printed display boards include:

• An understanding of proportion and scale of the finished product. A big blank space on the page equals a big blank space on the poster. 
• The ability to experiment and make changes easily. Want to know which font is easier to read? Duplicate the page, and test them out - look at full screen view to see which is clearer (see image on right by way of example - 17 pages of changes!).
• The range of colours available to use was wider than the colours of backing paper we had available in our store room.
• Access to tools like the colour dropper in Pages, which meant we could customize colours to images used on the boards.
• Tools such as the edges and midpoint alignment rulers, which enabled students to align objects easily.

We were very proud of the students' efforts, and hope that even more will take up the opportunity to choose a printed board next year.